⚾️ MLB HOF Ballot
- The Daily Stump
- Nov 19, 2024
- 2 min read
Yesterday, the Baseball Writers Association of America announced the new class of MLB greats who are eligible to get into the Hall of Fame!
We’ll start with the newest faces that were added to the ballot. Highlighting the new candidates are long-time Mariners stars Ichiro Suzuki and Felix Hernandez, Yankee and Indians legend CC Sabathia, and Boston Red Sox mainstay Dustin Pedroia.
Ichiro joined Fred Lynn as the only player to win AL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP in the same season in 2001. He hit a career .311 batting average with the Mariners, Yankees, and Marlins. He had a single-season record 262 hits in 2004. CC Sabathia was a six-time All-Star, won the 2007 AL Cy Young Award, and totaled 3,093 strikeouts in his career. That ranks third among lefty pitchers all time. Felix Hernandez was also a six-time All-Star, the 2010 AL Cy Young Award winner, as well as pitched the 23rd Perfect Game in MLB history in 2012. He spent his entire career in Seattle. Those three most likely have the best chance of having their names selected for the HOF in their first year.
Some other notable first-year names are Carlos Gonzalez, Fernando Rodney, Ian Kinsler, Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez, Adam Jones, and Curtis Granderson. All candidates have 10 years to reach the 75% vote threshold to be enshrined in the Hall.
The rest of the candidates are holdovers from previous years who are still within the 10-year window and have yet to reach the voting threshold. Most notably, reliever Billy Wagner received 284 votes, or 73.8% of voters, in last year’s ballot effort; he fell just five votes shy of enshrinement. He is in the final year of his 10-year eligibility window.
The rest of the holdovers contain some pretty impressive names that have either had their chances clouded by controversy, or their careers just haven’t stood the test of time to reach enshrinement. Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltran, and Bobby Abreu are all on the ballot but have struggled to receive votes due to the controversy surrounding their steroid use. All of those previously named failed to get above 35% of voters.
Other MLB greats like Chase Utley, Omar Vizquel, Jimmy Rollins, Andy Pettitte, Torii Hunter, and David Wright, among others, will also be on this year’s ballot as they still fall within the 10-year window.
The MLB Hall of Fame is arguably one of the toughest Hall of Fames to get into in all of professional American sports. The voters are traditionally hard to convince and certainly have a love for the history of the game. Hence why the steroid era has been such a hard sell for voters. As voters get younger, it’ll be interesting to see how they adapt and accept different eras of baseball.
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